gas/NEWS

   1 -*- text -*-
   2
   3 * Added support for MIPS32 Release 2.
   4
   5 * Added support for Xtensa architecture.
   6
   7 * Support for Intel's iWMMXt processor (an ARM variant) added.
   8
   9 * An assembler test generator has been contributed and an example file that
  10   uses it (gas/testsuite/gas/all/test-gen.c and test-exmaple.c).
  11
  12 * Support for SH2E added.
  13
  14 * GASP has now been removed.
  15
  16 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C4x and TMS320C3x series of
  17   DSP's contributed by Michael Hayes and Svein E. Seldal.
  18
  19 * Support for the Ubicom IP2xxx microcontroller added.
  20
  21 Changes in 2.13:
  22
  23 * Support for the Fujitsu FRV architecture added by Red Hat. Models for FR400
  24   and FR500 included.
  25
  26 * Support for DLX processor added.
  27
  28 * GASP has now been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  Use
  29   the macro facilities in GAS instead.
  30
  31 * GASP now correctly parses floating point numbers. Unless the base is
  32   explicitly specified, they are interpreted as decimal numbers regardless of
  33   the currently specified base.
  34
  35 Changes in 2.12:
  36
  37 * Support for Don Knuth's MMIX, by Hans-Peter Nilsson.
  38
  39 * Support for the OpenRISC 32-bit embedded processor by OpenCores.
  40
  41 * The ARM assembler now accepts -march=..., -mcpu=... and -mfpu=... for
  42   specifying the target instruction set.  The old method of specifying the
  43   target processor has been deprecated, but is still accepted for
  44   compatibility.
  45
  46 * Support for the VFP floating-point instruction set has been added to
  47   the ARM assembler.
  48
  49 * New psuedo op: .incbin to include a set of binary data at a given point
  50   in the assembly.  Contributed by Anders Norlander.
  51
  52 * The MIPS assembler now accepts -march/-mtune. -mcpu has been deprecated
  53   but still works for compatability.
  54
  55 * The MIPS assembler no longer issues a warning by default when it
  56   generates a nop instruction from a macro. The new command line option
  57   -n will turn on the warning.
  58
  59 Changes in 2.11:
  60
  61 * Support for PDP-11 and 2.11BSD a.out format, by Lars Brinkhoff.
  62
  63 * x86 gas now supports the full Pentium4 instruction set.
  64
  65 * Support for AMD x86-64 architecture, by Jan Hubicka, SuSE Labs.
  66
  67 * Support for Motorola 68HC11 and 68HC12.
  68
  69 * Support for Texas Instruments TMS320C54x (tic54x).
  70
  71 * Support for IA-64.
  72
  73 * Support for i860, by Jason Eckhardt.
  74
  75 * Support for CRIS (Axis Communications ETRAX series).
  76
  77 * x86 gas has a new .arch pseudo op to specify the target CPU architecture.
  78
  79 * x86 gas -q command line option quietens warnings about register size changes
  80   due to suffix, indirect jmp/call without `*', stand-alone prefixes, and
  81   translating various deprecated floating point instructions.
  82
  83 Changes in 2.10:
  84
  85 * Support for the ARM msr instruction was changed to only allow an immediate
  86   operand when altering the flags field.
  87
  88 * Support for ATMEL AVR.
  89
  90 * Support for IBM 370 ELF.  Somewhat experimental.
  91
  92 * Support for numbers with suffixes.
  93
  94 * Added support for breaking to the end of repeat loops.
  95
  96 * Added support for parallel instruction syntax (DOUBLEBAR_PARALLEL).
  97
  98 * New .elseif pseudo-op added.
  99
 100 * New --fatal-warnings option.
 101
 102 * picoJava architecture support added.
 103
 104 * Motorola MCore 210 processor support added.
 105
 106 * A new pseudo-op .intel_syntax has been implemented to allow gas to parse i386
 107   assembly programs with intel syntax.
 108
 109 * New pseudo-ops .func,.endfunc to aid in debugging user-written assembler code.
 110
 111 * Added -gdwarf2 option to generate DWARF 2 debugging information.
 112
 113 * Full 16-bit mode support for i386.
 114
 115 * Greatly improved instruction operand checking for i386.  This change will
 116   produce errors or warnings on incorrect assembly code that previous versions
 117   of gas accepted.  If you get unexpected messages from code that worked with
 118   older versions of gas, please double check the code before reporting a bug.
 119
 120 * Weak symbol support added for COFF targets.
 121
 122 * Mitsubishi D30V support added.
 123
 124 * Texas Instruments c80 (tms320c80) support added.
 125
 126 * i960 ELF support added.
 127
 128 * ARM ELF support added.
 129
 130 Changes in 2.9:
 131
 132 * Texas Instruments c30 (tms320c30) support added.
 133
 134 * The assembler now optimizes the exception frame information generated by egcs
 135   and gcc 2.8.  The new --traditional-format option disables this optimization.
 136
 137 * Added --gstabs option to generate stabs debugging information.
 138
 139 * The -a option takes a new suboption, m (e.g., -alm) to expand macros in a
 140   listing.
 141
 142 * Added -MD option to print dependencies.
 143
 144 Changes in 2.8:
 145
 146 * BeOS support added.
 147
 148 * MIPS16 support added.
 149
 150 * Motorola ColdFire 5200 support added (configure for m68k and use -m5200).
 151
 152 * Alpha/VMS support added.
 153
 154 * m68k options --base-size-default-16, --base-size-default-32,
 155   --disp-size-default-16, and --disp-size-default-32 added.
 156
 157 * The alignment directives now take an optional third argument, which is the
 158   maximum number of bytes to skip.  If doing the alignment would require
 159   skipping more than the given number of bytes, the alignment is not done at
 160   all.
 161
 162 * The ELF assembler has a new pseudo-op, .symver, used for symbol versioning.
 163
 164 * The -a option takes a new suboption, c (e.g., -alc), to skip false
 165   conditionals in listings.
 166
 167 * Added new pseudo-op, .equiv; it's like .equ, except that it is an error if
 168   the symbol is already defined.
 169
 170 Changes in 2.7:
 171
 172 * The PowerPC assembler now allows the use of symbolic register names (r0,
 173   etc.) if -mregnames is used.  Symbolic names preceded by a '%' (%r0, etc.)
 174   can be used any time.  PowerPC 860 move to/from SPR instructions have been
 175   added.
 176
 177 * Alpha Linux (ELF) support added.
 178
 179 * PowerPC ELF support added.
 180
 181 * m68k Linux (ELF) support added.
 182
 183 * i960 Hx/Jx support added.
 184
 185 * i386/PowerPC gnu-win32 support added.
 186
 187 * SCO ELF support added.  For OpenServer 5 targets (i386-unknown-sco3.2v5) the
 188   default is to build COFF-only support.  To get a set of tools that generate
 189   ELF (they'll understand both COFF and ELF), you must configure with
 190   target=i386-unknown-sco3.2v5elf.
 191
 192 * m88k-motorola-sysv3* support added.
 193
 194 Changes in 2.6:
 195
 196 * Gas now directly supports macros, without requiring GASP.
 197
 198 * Gas now has an MRI assembler compatibility mode.  Use -M or --mri to select
 199   MRI mode.  The pseudo-op ``.mri 1'' will switch into the MRI mode until the
 200   ``.mri 0'' is seen; this can be convenient for inline assembler code.
 201
 202 * Added --defsym SYM=VALUE option.
 203
 204 * Added -mips4 support to MIPS assembler.
 205
 206 * Added PIC support to Solaris and SPARC SunOS 4 assembler.
 207
 208 Changes in 2.4:
 209
 210 * Converted this directory to use an autoconf-generated configure script.
 211
 212 * ARM support, from Richard Earnshaw.
 213
 214 * Updated VMS support, from Pat Rankin, including considerably improved
 215   debugging support.
 216
 217 * Support for the control registers in the 68060.
 218
 219 * Handles (ignores) a new directive ".this_GCC_requires_the_GNU_assembler", to
 220   provide for possible future gcc changes, for targets where gas provides some
 221   features not available in the native assembler.  If the native assembler is
 222   used, it should become obvious pretty quickly what the problem is.
 223
 224 * Usage message is available with "--help".
 225
 226 * The GNU Assembler Preprocessor (gasp) is included.  (Actually, it was in 2.3
 227   also, but didn't get into the NEWS file.)
 228
 229 * Weak symbol support for a.out.
 230
 231 * A bug in the listing code which could cause an infinite loop has been fixed.
 232   Bugs in listings when generating a COFF object file have also been fixed.
 233
 234 * Initial i386-svr4 PIC implementation from Eric Youngdale, based on code by
 235   Paul Kranenburg.
 236
 237 * Improved Alpha support.  Immediate constants can have a much larger range
 238   now. Support for the 21164 has been contributed by Digital.
 239
 240 * Updated ns32k (pc532-mach, netbsd532) support from Ian Dall.
 241
 242 Changes in 2.3:
 243
 244 * Mach i386 support, by David Mackenzie and Ken Raeburn.
 245
 246 * RS/6000 and PowerPC support by Ian Taylor.
 247
 248 * VMS command scripts (make-gas.com, config-gas.com) have been worked on a bit,
 249   based on mail received from various people.  The `-h#' option should work
 250   again too.
 251
 252 * HP-PA work, by Jeff Law.  Note, for the PA, gas-2.3 has been designed to work
 253   with gdb-4.12 and gcc-2.6.  As gcc-2.6 has not been released yet, a special
 254   version of gcc-2.5.8 has been patched to work with gas-2.3.  You can retrieve
 255   this special version of gcc-2.5.8 via anonymous ftp from jaguar.cs.utah.edu
 256   in the "dist" directory.
 257
 258 * Vax support in gas fixed for BSD, so it builds and seems to run a couple
 259   simple tests okay.  I haven't put it through extensive testing.  (GNU make is
 260   currently required for BSD 4.3 builds.)
 261
 262 * Support for the DEC Alpha, running OSF/1 (ECOFF format).  The gas support is
 263   based on code donated by CMU, which used an a.out-based format.  I'm afraid
 264   the alpha-a.out support is pretty badly mangled, and much of it removed;
 265   making it work will require rewriting it as BFD support for the format anyways.
 266
 267 * Irix 5 support.
 268
 269 * The test suites have been fixed up a bit, so that they should work with a
 270   couple different versions of expect and dejagnu.
 271
 272 * Symbols' values are now handled internally as expressions, permitting more
 273   flexibility in evaluating them in some cases.  Some details of relocation
 274   handling have also changed, and simple constant pool management has been
 275   added, to make the Alpha port easier.
 276
 277 * New option "--statistics" for printing out program run times.  This is
 278   intended to be used with the gcc "-Q" option, which prints out times spent in
 279   various phases of compilation.  (You should be able to get all of them
 280   printed out with "gcc -Q -Wa,--statistics", I think.)
 281
 282 Changes in 2.2:
 283
 284 * RS/6000 AIX and MIPS SGI Irix 5 support has been added.
 285
 286 * Configurations that are still in development (and therefore are convenient to
 287   have listed in configure.in) still get rejected without a minor change to
 288   gas/Makefile.in, so people not doing development work shouldn't get the
 289   impression that support for such configurations is actually believed to be
 290   reliable.
 291
 292 * The program name (usually "as") is printed when a fatal error message is
 293   displayed.  This should prevent some confusion about the source of occasional
 294   messages about "internal errors".
 295
 296 * ELF support is falling into place.  Support for the 386 should be working.
 297   Support for SPARC Solaris is in.  HPPA support from Utah is being integrated.
 298
 299 * Symbol values are maintained as expressions instead of being immediately
 300   boiled down to add-symbol, sub-symbol, and constant.  This permits slightly
 301   more complex calculations involving symbols whose values are not alreadey
 302   known.
 303
 304 * DBX-style debugging info ("stabs") is now supported for COFF formats.
 305   If any stabs directives are seen in the source, GAS will create two new
 306   sections: a ".stab" and a ".stabstr" section.  The format of the .stab
 307   section is nearly identical to the a.out symbol format, and .stabstr is
 308   its string table.  For this to be useful, you must have configured GCC
 309   to generate stabs (by defining DBX_DEBUGGING_INFO), and must have a GDB
 310   that can use the stab sections (4.11 or later).
 311
 312 * LynxOS, on i386 and m68k platforms, is now supported.  SPARC LynxOS
 313   support is in progress.
 314
 315 Changes in 2.1:
 316
 317 * Several small fixes for i386-aix (PS/2) support from Minh Tran-Le have been
 318   incorporated, but not well tested yet.
 319
 320 * Altered the opcode table split for m68k; it should require less VM to compile
 321   with gcc now.
 322
 323 * Some minor adjustments to add (Convergent Technologies') Miniframe support,
 324   suggested by Ronald Cole.
 325
 326 * HPPA support (running OSF only, not HPUX) has been contributed by Utah.  This
 327   includes improved ELF support, which I've started adapting for SPARC Solaris
 328   2.x.  Integration isn't completely, so it probably won't work.
 329
 330 * HP9000/300 support, donated by HP, has been merged in.
 331
 332 * Ian Taylor has finished the MIPS ECOFF (Ultrix, Irix) support.
 333
 334 * Better error messages for unsupported configurations (e.g., hppa-hpux).
 335
 336 * Test suite framework is starting to become reasonable.
 337
 338 Changes in 2.0:
 339
 340 * Mostly bug fixes.
 341
 342 * Some more merging of BFD and ELF code, but ELF still doesn't work.
 343
 344 Changes in 1.94:
 345
 346 * BFD merge is partly done.  Adventurous souls may try giving configure the
 347   "--with-bfd-assembler" option.  Currently, ELF format requires it, a.out
 348   format accepts it; SPARC CPU accepts it.  It's the default only for OS "elf"
 349   or "solaris".  (ELF isn't really supported yet.  It needs work.  I've got
 350   some code from Utah for HP-PA ELF, and from DG for m88k ELF, but they're not
 351   fully merged yet.)
 352
 353 * The 68K opcode table has been split in half.  It should now compile under gcc
 354   without consuming ridiculous amounts of memory.
 355
 356 * A couple data structures have been reduced in size.  This should result in
 357   saving a little bit of space at runtime.
 358
 359 * Support for MIPS, from OSF and Ralph Campbell, has been merged in.  The OSF
 360   code provided ROSE format support, which I haven't merged in yet.  (I can
 361   make it available, if anyone wants to try it out.)  Ralph's code, for BSD
 362   4.4, supports a.out format.  We don't have ECOFF support in just yet; it's
 363   coming.
 364
 365 * Support for the Hitachi H8/500 has been added.
 366
 367 * VMS host and target support should be working now, thanks chiefly to Eric
 368   Youngdale.
 369
 370 Changes in 1.93.01:
 371
 372 * For m68k, support for more processors has been added: 68040, CPU32, 68851.
 373
 374 * For i386, .align is now power-of-two; was number-of-bytes.
 375
 376 * For m68k, "%" is now accepted before register names.  For COFF format, which
 377   doesn't use underscore prefixes for C labels, it is required, so variable "a0"
 378   can be distinguished from the register.
 379
 380 * Last public release was 1.38.  Lots of configuration changes since then, lots
 381   of new CPUs and formats, lots of bugs fixed.
 382
 383 \f
 384 Local variables:
 385 fill-column: 79
 386 End: